



3& :'•• 0$ n? 







ALTEMUS' ETERNAL LIFE SERIES. 

Selections from the writings of well-known religious au- 
thors' works, beautifully printed and daintily bound in 
leatherette with original designs in silver and ink. 

PRICE, 35 CENTS PER VOLUME. 



ETERNAL LIFE, by Professor Henry Drummond. 
LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY, by Rev. Andrew Murray. 
GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S WORK, by Martin Luther. 
FAITH, by Thomas Arnold. 
THE CREATION STORY, by Honorable William E. 

Gladstone. 
THE MESSAGE OF COMFORT, by Rt. Rev. Ashton 

Oxenden. 
THE MESSAGE OF PEACE, by Rev. R. W. Church. 
THE LORD'S PRAYER AND THE TEN COM- 
MANDMENTS, by Dean Stanley. 
THE MEMOIRS OF JESUS, by Rev. Robert F. Horton. 
HYMNS OF PRAISE AND GLADNESS, by Elisabeth 

R. Seovil. 
DIFFICULTIES, by Hannah Whitall Smith. 
GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING, by Rev. Henry Ward 

Beecher. 
HAVE FAITH IN GOD, by Rev. Andrew Murray. 
TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY, by Rev. Henry 

Ward Beecher. 
THE CHRIST IN WHOM CHRISTIANS BELIEVE 

by Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. 
IN MY NAME, by Rev. Andrew Murray. 
SIX WARNINGS, by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. 
THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN BUSINESS MAN, 

by Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. 
POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, by Rev. Henry Ward 

Beecher. 
TRUE LIBERTY, by Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. 
INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, by Rev. Henry Ward 

Beecher. 
THE BEAUTY OF A LIFE OF SERVICE, by Rt. 

Rev. Phillips Brooks. 
THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD, by Rev. A. 

T. Pierson,D.D. 
THOUGHT AND ACTION, by Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. 
THE HEAVENLY VISION, by Rev. F. B. Meyer. 
MORNING STRENGTH, by Elisabeth R. Seovil. 
FOR THE QUIET HOUR, by Edith V. Bradt. 
EVENING COMFORT, by Elisabeth R. Seovil. 
WORDS OF HELP FOR CHRISTIAN GIRLS, by 

Rev. F. B. Meyer. 
HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE, by Rev. Dwight L. 

Moody. 
EXPECTATION CORNER, by E. S. Elliot. 
JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER, by Hesba Stretton. 
JESSICA'S MOTHER, by Hesba Stretton. 
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, by 

Henry Drummond. 
HOW TO LEARN HOW, by Henry Drummond. 
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? THE STUDY OF THE BI- 
BLE; A TALK ON BOOKS, by Henry Drummond. 
PAX VOBISCUM, by Henry Drummond. 
THE CHANGED LIFE, by Henry Drummond. 
FIRST ! A TALK WITH BOYS, by Henry Drummond. 

HENRY ALTEMUS, Philadelphia. 




HENRY DRUMMOND 







Pax Vobiscum 






By 
Henry Drummond 



Philadelphia 
Henry Altemus 




«^^ 1. 






Copyright, 1898, by Henry Altemus. 



. 






PAX VOBISCUM. 



"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
my yoke upon you, and learn of me : for I am 
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall rind 
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, 
and my burden is light," 



PAX VOBISCUM. 



T HEARD the other morning a ser- 
* mon by a distinguished preacher 
upon " Rest." It was full of beauti- 
ful thoughts ; but when I came to ask 
myself, "How does he say I can get 
Rest ? " there was no answer. The 
sermon was sincerely meant to be 
practical, yet it contained no experi- 
ence that seemed to me to be tangi- 
ble, nor any advice which could help 
me to find the thing itself as I went 
about the world that afternoon. Yet 
this omission of the only important 

9 



10 PAX VOBISCUM. 

problem was not the fault of the 
preacher. The whole popular religion 
is in the twilight here. And when 
pressed for really working specifics for 
the experiences with which it deals, 
it falters, and seems to lose itself in 
mist. 

The want of connection between the 
great words of religion and every-day 
life has bewildered and discouraged 
all of us. Christianity possesses the 
noblest words in the language; its 
literature overflows with terms expres- 
sive of the greatest and happiest 
moods which can fill the soul of man. 
Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light 
— these words occur with such per- 
sistency in hymns and prayers that an 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 11 

observer might think they formed the 
staple of Christian experience. But 
on coming to close quarters with the 
actual life of most of us, how surely 
would he be disenchanted ! I do not 
think we ourselves are aware how 
much our religious life is made up of 
phrases; how much of what we call 
Christian experience is only a dialect 
of the Churches, a mere religious 
phraseology with almost nothing be- 
hind it in what we really feel and 
know. 

To some of us, indeed, the Chris- 
tian experiences seem further away 
than when we took the first steps in 
the Christian life. That life has not 
opened out as we had hoped; we do 



12 PAX VOBISCUM. 

not regret our religion, but we are dis- 
appointed with it There are times, 
perhaps, when wandering notes from 
a diviner music stray into our spirits ; 
but these experiences come at few and 
fitful moments. We have no sense of 
possession in them. When they visit 
us, it is a surprise. When they leave 
us, it is without explanation. When 
we wish their return, we do not know 
how to secure it. 

All which points to a religion with- 
out solid base, and a poor and flicker- 
ing life. It means a great bankruptcy 
in those experiences which give Chris- 
tianity its personal solace and make it 
attractive to the world, and a great 
uncertainty as to any remedy. It is 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 13 

as if we knew everything about health 
— except the way to get it. 

I am quite sure that the difficulty 
does not lie in the fact that men are 
not in earnest. This is simply not the 
fact. All around us Christians are 
wearing themselves out in trying to be 
better. The amount of spiritual long- 
ing in the world — in the hearts of 
unnumbered thousands of men and 
women in whom we should never sus- 
pect it; among the wise and thought- 
ful; among the young and gay, who 
seldom assuage and never betray their 
thirst — this is one of the most wonder- 
ful and touching facts of life. It is 
not more heat that is needed, but more 
light; not more force, but a wiser di- 



14 PAX VOBISCUM. 

rection to be given to very real energies 
already there. 

The Address which follows is offered 
as an humble contribution to this prob- 
lem, and in the hope that it may help 
some who are " seeking Rest and find- 
ing none " to a firmer footing on one 
great, solid, simple principle which 
underlies not the Christian experiences 
alone, but all experiences, and all life. 

What Christian experience wants is 
thread, a vertebral column, method. It 
is impossible to believe that there is 
no remedy for its unevenness and di- 
shevelment, or that the remedy is a 
secret. The idea, also, that some few 
men, by happy chance or happier 
temperament, have been given the 



PEACE BE WITH YOU. 15 

secret — as if there were some sort of 
knack or trick of it — is wholly incredi- 
ble. Religion must ripen its fruit for 
every temperament; and the way even 
into its highest heights must be by a 
gateway through which the peoples of 
the world may pass. 

I shall try to lead up to this gateway 
by a very familiar path. But as that 
path is strangely unfrequented, and 
even unknown, where it passes into 
the religious sphere, I must dwell for 
a moment on the commonest of com- 
monplaces. 



16 PAX VOBISCUM. 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 



NTOTHING that happens in the 
* world happens by chance. God 
is a God of order. Everything is 
arranged upon definite principles, and 
never at random. The world, even 
the religious world, is governed by 
law. Character is governed by law. 
Happiness is governed by law. The 
Christian experiences are governed by 
law. Men, forgetting this, expect 
Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into 
their souls from the air like snow or 
rain. But in point of fact they do not 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 17 

do so; and if they did they would no 
less have their origin in previous ac- 
tivities and be controlled by natural 
laws. Rain and snow do drop from 
the air, but not without a long pre- 
vious history. They are the mature 
effects of former causes. Equally so 
are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, 
too, have each a previous history. 
Storms and winds and calms are not 
accidents, but are brought about by 
antecedent circumstances. Rest and 
Peace are but calms in man's inward 
nature, and arise through causes as 
definite and as inevitable. 

Realize it thoroughly : it is a me? 
thodical not an accidental world. If a 
housewife turns out a good cake, it is 



18 PAX VOBISCUM. 

the result of a sound receipt, carefully 
applied. She cannot mix the assigned 
ingredients and fire them for the ap- 
propriate time without producing the 
result. It is not she who has made the 
cake ; it is nature. She brings related 
things together; sets causes at work; 
these causes bring about the result. 
She is not a creator, but an interme- 
diary. She does not expect random 
causes to produce specific effects — 
random ingredients would only pro- 
duce random cakes. So it is in 
the making of Christian experiences. 
Certain lines are followed; certain 
effects are the result. These effects 
cannot but be the result. But the 
result can never take place without 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 19 

the previous cause. To expect results 
without antecedents is to expect cakes 
without ingredients. That impossi- 
bility is precisely the almost universal 
expectation. 

Now what I mainly wish to do is to 
help you firmly to grasp this simple 
principle of Cause and Effect in the 
spiritual world. And instead of ap- 
plying the principle generally to each 
of the Christian experiences in turn, I 
shall examine its application to one in 
some little detail. The one I shall 
select is Rest. And I think any one 
who follows the application in this 
single instance will be able to apply it 
for himself to all the others. 

Take such a sentence as this: Afri- 



20 PAX VOBISCUM. 

can explorers are subject to fevers 
which cause restlessness and delirium. 
Note the expression, "cause restless- 
ness." Restlessness has a cause. Clearly 
then, any one who wished to get rid 
of restlessness would proceed at once 
to deal with the cause. If that were 
not removed, a doctor might pre- 
scribe a hundred things, and all might 
be taken in turn, without producing 
the least effect. Things are so ar- 
ranged in the original planning of the 
world that certain effects must follow 
certain causes, and certain causes 
must be abolished before certain effects 
can be removed. Certain parts of 
Africa are inseparably linked with the 
physical experience called fever; this 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 21 

fever is in turn infallibly linked with a 
mental experience called restlessness 
and delirium. To abolish the mental 
experience the radical method would 
be to abolish the physical experience, 
and the way of abolishing the physical 
experience would be to abolish Africa, 
or to cease to go there. Now this 
holds good for all other forms of Rest- 
lessness. Every other form and kind 
of Restlessness in the world has a 
definite cause, and the particular kind 
of Restlessness can only be removed 
by removing the allotted cause. 

All this is also true of Rest. Rest- 
lessness has a cause: must not Rest 
have a cause ? Necessarily. If it 
were a chance world we would not 



22 PAX VOBISCUM. 

expect this; but, being a methodical 
world, it cannot be otherwise. Rest, 
physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, 
every kind of rest, has a cause as cer- 
tainly as restlessness. Now causes 
are discriminating. There is one kind 
of cause for every particular effect, 
and no other; and if one particular 
effect is desired, the corresponding 
cause must be set in motion. It is no 
use proposing finely devised schemes, 
or going through general pious exer- 
cises in the hope that somehow Rest 
will come. The Christian life is not 
casual, but causal. All nature is a 
standing protest against the absurdity 
of expecting to secure spiritual effects, 
or any effects, without the employment 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 23 

of appropriate causes. The Great 
Teacher dealt what ought to have been 
the final blow to this infinite irrelevancy 
by a single question, "Do men gather 
grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ? " 

Why, then, did the Great Teacher 
not educate His followers fully ? Why 
did He not tell us, for example, how 
such a thing as Rest might be obtained ? 
The answer is, that He did. But 
plainly, explicitly, in so many words? 
Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many 
words. He assigned Rest to its cause, 
in words with which each of us has 
been familiar from his earliest child- 
hood. 

He begins, you remember — for you 
at once know the passage I refer to — 



24 PAX VOBISCUM. 

almost as if Rest could be had without 
any cause : " Come unto Me," He 
says, " and I will give you Rest." 

Rest, apparently, was a favor to be 
bestowed ; men had but to come to 
Him ; He would give it to every appli- 
cant. But the next sentence takes 
that all back. The qualification, in- 
deed, is added instantaneously. For 
what the first sentence seemed to give 
was next thing to an impossibility. 
For how, in a literal sense, can Rest 
be given? One could no more give 
away Rest than he could give away 
Laughter. We speak of " causing " 
laughter, which we can do ; but we 
cannot give it away. When we speak 
of giving pain, we know perfectly well 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 25 

we cannot give pain away. And 
when we aim at giving pleasure, all 
that we do is to arrange a set of cir- 
cumstances in such a way as that 
these shall cause pleasure. Of course 
there is a sense, and a very wonderful 
sense, in which a Great Personality 
breathes upon all who come within its 
influence an abiding peace and trust. 
Men can be to other men as the shadow 
of a great rock in a thirsty land. 
Much more Christ; much more Christ 
as Perfect Man; much more still as 
Savior of the world. But it is not this 
of which I speak. When Christ said 
He would give men rest, He meant 
simply that He would put them in the 
way of it. By no act of conveyance 



26 PAX VOBISCUM. 

would, or could, He make over His 
own Rest to them. He could give 
them His receipt for it. That was all. 
But He would not make it for them; 
for one thing, it was not in His plan to 
make it for them; for another thing, 
men were not so planned that it could 
be made for them ; and for yet another 
thing, it was a thousand times better 
that they should make it for them- 
selves. 

That this is the meaning becomes 
obvious from the wording of the second 
sentence : " Learn of Me and ye shall 
find Rest." Rest, that is to say, is 
not a thing that can be given, but a 
thing to be acquired. It comes not by 
an act, but by a process. It is not to 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 27 

be found in a happy hour, as one finds 
a treasure; but slowly, as one finds 
knowledge. It could indeed be no 
more found in a moment than could 
knowledge. A soil has to be prepared 
for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow 
in one climate and not in another; at 
one altitude and not at another. Like 
all growths it will have an orderly de- 
velopment and mature by slow degrees. 
The nature of this slow process 
Christ clearly defines when He says 
we are to achieve Rest by learning. 
"Learn of Me," He says, "and ye 
shall find Rest to your souls." Now 
consider the extraordinary originality 
of this utterance. How novel the con- 
nection between these two words, 



28 PAX VOBISCUM. 

" Learn " and " Rest " ! How few of 
us have ever associated them — ever 
thought that Rest was a thing to be 
learned; ever laid ourselves out for it 
as we would to learn a language ; ever 
practiced it as we would practice the 
violin ? Does it not show how entirely 
new Christ's teaching still is to the 
world, that so old and threadbare an 
aphorism should still be so little ap- 
plied? The last thing most of us 
would have thought of would have 
been to associate Rest with Work. 

What must one work at? What is 
that which if duly learned will find the 
soul of man in Rest? Christ answers 
without the least hesitation. He speci- 
fies two things — Meekness and Low- 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 29 

liness. " Learn of Me," He says, 
u for I am meek and lowly in heart." 
Now, these two things are not chosen 
at random. To these accomplish- 
ments, in a special way, Rest is at- 
tached. Learn these, in short, and 
you have already found Rest. These 
as they stand are direct causes of 
Rest ; will produce it at once ; cannot 
but produce it at once. And if you 
think for a single moment, you will 
see how this is necessarily so, for 
causes are never arbitrary, and the 
connection between antecedent and 
consequent here and everywhere lies 
deep in the nature of things. 

What is the connection, then ? I 
answer by a further question. What 



30 PAX VOBISCUM. 

are the chief causes of Unrest* If 
you know yourself, you will answer 
Pride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you 
look back upon the past years of your 
life, is it not true that its unhappiness 
h'as chiefly come from the succession 
of personal mortifications, and almost 
trivial disappointments which the in- 
tercourse of life has brought you? 
Great trials come at lengthened inter- 
vals, and we rise to breast them ; but 
it is the petty friction of our every 
day life with one another, the jar 
of business or of work, the discord 
of the domestic circle, the collapse of 
our ambition, the crossing of our will 
or the taking down of our conceit, 
which make inward peace impossible. 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 31 

Wounded vanity, then, disappointed 
hopes, unsatisfied selfishness — these 
are the old, vulgar, universal sources 
of man's unrest. 

Now it is obvious why Christ pointed 
out as the two chief objects for attain- 
ment the exact opposites of these. To 
Meekness and Lowliness these things 
simply do not exist. They cure unrest 
by making it impossible. These reme- 
dies do not trifle with surface symp- 
toms ; they strike at once at removing 
causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a 
self-centered life can be removed at 
once by learning Meekness and Low- 
liness of heart. He who learns them 
is for ever proof against it He lives 
henceforth a charmed life. Chris- 



32 PAX VOBISCUM. 

tianity is a fine inoculation, a transfu- 
sion of healthy blood into an anaemic 
or poisoned soul. No fever can attack 
a perfectly sound body; no fever of 
unrest can disturb a soul which has 
breathed the air or learned the ways 
of Christ. Men sigh for the wings of 
a dove that they may fly away and be 
at rest. But flying away will not help 
us. "The Kingdom of God is within 
you." We aspire to the top to look 
for Rest ; it lies at the bottom. Water 
rests only when it gets to the lowest 
place. So do men. Hence, be lowly. 
The man who has no opinion of him- 
self at all can never be hurt if others 
do not acknowledge him. Hence, be 
meek. He who is without expecta- 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 33 

tion cannot fret if nothing comes to 
him. It is self-evident that these 
things are so. The lowly man and 
the meek man are really above all 
other men, above all other things. 
They dominate the world because they 
do not care for it. The miser does 
not possess gold, gold possesses him. 
But the meek possess it. " The meek," 
said Christ, " inherit the earth." They 
do not buy it ; they do not conquer it ; 
but they inherit it. 

There are people who go about the 
world looking out for slights, and they 
are necessarily miserable, for they find 
them at every turn — especially the im- 
aginary ones. One has the same pity 
for such men as for the very poor. 



34 PAX VOBISCUM. 

They are the morally illiterate. They 
have had no real education, for they 
have never learned how to live. Few 
men know how to live. We grow up 
at random, carrying into mature life 
the merely animal methods and mo- 
tives which we had as little children. 
And it does not occur to us that all 
this must be changed ; that much of it 
must be revised; that life is the finest 
of the Fine Arts ; that it has to be 
learned with lifelong patience, and that 
the years of our pilgrimage are all too 
short to master it triumphantly. 

Yet this is what Christianity is for — 
to teach men the Art of Life. And 
its whole curriculum lies in one word — ■ 
" Learn of Me." Unlike most educa- 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 35 

tion, this is almost purely personal; it 
is not to be had from books or lectures 
or creeds or doctrines. It is a study 
from the life. Christ never said much 
in mere words about the Christian 
Graces. He lived them, He was them. 
Yet we do not merely copy Him. 
We learn His art by living with Him, 
like the old apprentices with their 
masters. 

Now we understand it all? Christ's 
invitation to the weary and heavy- 
laden is a call to begin life over again 
upon a new principle — upon His own 
principle. "Watch My way of doing 
things," He says. " Follow Me. 
Take life as I take it. Be meek and 
lowly and you will find Rest." 



36 PAX VOBISCUM. 

I do not say, remember, that the 
Christian life to every man, or to any 
man, can be a bed of roses. No edu- 
cational process can be this. And 
perhaps if some men knew how much 
was involved in the simple " learn " of 
Christ, they would not enter His school 
with so irresponsible a heart. For 
there is not only much to learn, but 
much to unlearn. Many men never 
go to this school at all till their dis- 
position is already half ruined and 
character has taken on its fatal set. 
To learn arithmetic is difficult at fifty — 
much more to learn Christianity. To 
learn simply what it is to be meek and 
lowly, in the case of one who has had 
no lessons in that in childhood, may 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 37 

cost him half of what he values most 
on earth. Do we realize, for instance, 
that the way of teaching humility is 
generally by humiliation. There is 
probably no other school for it. When 
a man enters himself as a pupil in such 
a school it means a very great thing. 
There is such Rest there, but there 
is also much Work. 

I should be wrong, even though my 
theme is the brighter side, to ignore 
the cross and minimize the cost. Only 
it gives to the cross a more definite 
meaning, and a rarer value, to con- 
nect it thus directly and causally with 
the growth of the inner life. Our 
platitudes on the "benefits of afflic- 
tion" are usually about as vague as 



38 PAX VOBISCUM. 

our theories of Christian Experience. 
"Somehow," we believe affliction does 
us good. But it is not a question of 
''Somehow." The result is definite, 
calculable, necessary. It is under the 
strictest law of cause and effect. The 
first effect of losing one's fortune, for 
instance, is humiliation ; and the effect 
of humiliation, as we have just seen, 
is to make one humble ; and the effect 
of being humble is to produce Rest. 
It is a roundabout way, apparently, of 
producing Rest; but Nature generally 
works by circular processes; and it is 
not certain that there is any other way 
of becoming humble, or of finding 
Rest. If a man could make himself 
P* unble to order, it might simplify 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 39 

matters, but we do not find that this 
happens. Hence we must all go 
through the mill. Hence death, death 
to the lower self, is the nearest gate 
and the quickest road to life. 

Yet this is only half the truth. 
Christ's life outwardly was one of the 
most troubled lives that was ever lived : 
Tempest and tumult, tumult and tem- 
pest, the waves breaking over it all the 
time till the worn body was laid in the 
grave. But the inner life was a sea 
of glass. The great calm was always 
there. At any moment you might 
have gone to Him and found Rest, 
And even when the blood-hounds were 
dogging Him in the streets pf Jenj- 
salem, He turned to His disciples and 



40 PAX VOBISCUBL 

offered them as a last legacy, "My 
peace." Nothing ever for a moment 
broke the serenity of Christ's life on 
earth. Misfortune could not reach 
Him; He had no fortune. Food, rai- 
ment, money — fountain-heads of half 
the world's weariness — He simply did 
not care for; they played no part in 
His life; He "took no thought" for 
them. It was impossible to affect Him 
by lowering His reputation. He had 
already made himself of no reputation. 
He was dumb before insult. When He 
was reviled He reviled not again. In 
fact, there was nothing that the world 
could do to Him that could ruffle the 
surface of His spirit. 
Such living, as merely living, is a* 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 41 

together unique. It is only when we 
see what it was in Him that we can 
know what the word Rest means. It 
lies not in emotions, nor in the absence 
of emotions. It is not a hallowed feel- 
ing that comes over us in church. It 
is not something that the preacher has 
in his voice. It is not in nature, or in 
poetry, or in music — though in all 
these there is soothing. It is the mind 
at leisure from itself. It is the perfect 
poise of the soul; the absolute adjust- 
ment of the inward man to the stress 
of all outward things; the prepared- 
ness against every emergency ; the 
stability of assured convictions ; the 
eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; 
the repose of a heart set deep in God. 



42 PAX VOBISCUM. 

It is the mood of the man who says, 
with Browning, " God's in His Heaven, 
all's well with the world." 

Two painters each painted a picture 
to illustrate his conception of rest. 
The first chose for his scene a still, 
lone lake among the far-off moun- 
tains. The second threw on his can- 
vas a thundering water-fall, with a 
fragile birch tree bending over the 
foam ; at the fork of a branch, almost 
wet with the cataract's spray, a robin 
sat on its nest. The first was only 
Stagnation ; the last was Rest. For in 
Rest there are always two elements — 
tranquility and energy; silence and 
turbulence; creation and destruction; 
fearlessness and fearfulness. This it 
was in Christ 



EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES. 43 

It is quite plain from all this that 
whatever else He claimed to be or to 
do, He at least knew how to live. All 
this is the perfection of living, of liv- 
ing in the mere sense of passing 
through the world in the best way. 
Hence His anxiety to communicate 
His idea of life to others. He came, 
He said, to give men life, true life, a 
more abundant life than they were 
living; "the life," as the fine phrase 
in the Revised Version has it, " that is 
life indeed." This is what He him- 
self possessed, and it was this which 
He offers to all mankind. And hence 
His direct appeal for all to come to 
Him who had not made much of life, 
who were weary and heavy laden. 



44 PAX VOBISCUM. 

These He would teach His secret 
They, also, should know "the life that 
is life indeed." 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 45 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 



HPHERE is still one doubt to clear 
* up. After the statement, " Learn 
of Me," Christ throws in the discon- 
certing qualification, " Take My Yoke 
upon you and learn of Me." Why, if 
all this be true, does He call it a yoke ? 
Why, while professing to give Rest, 
does He with the next breath whisper 
"burden" f Is the Christian life, after 
all, what its enemies take it for — an 
additional weight to the already great 
woe of life, some extra punctiliousness 
about duty, some painful devotion to ob» 



46 PAX VOBISCUM. 

servances, some heavy restriction and 
trammelling of all that is joyous and 
free in the world ? Is life not hard and 
sorrowful enough without being fet- 
tered with yet another yoke ? 

It is astounding how so glaring a 
misunderstanding of this plain sentence 
should ever have passed into currency. 
Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke 
is really for ? Is it to be a burden to 
the animal which wears it? It is just 
the opposite. It is to make its burden 
light. Attached to the oxen in any 
other way than by a yoke, the plough 
would be intolerable. Worked by 
means of a yoke, it is light. A yoke 
is not an instrument of torture; it is 
an instrument of mercy. It is not a 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 47 

malicious contrivance for making work 
hard; it is a gentle device to make 
hard labor light. It is not meant to 
give pain, but to save pain. And yet 
men speak of the yoke of Christ as if 
it were a slavery, and look upon those 
who wear it as objects of compassion. 
For generations we have had homi- 
lies on "The Yoke of Christ," some 
delighting in portraying its narrow 
exactions; some seeking in these exac- 
tions the marks of its divinity; others 
apologizing for it, and toning it down; 
still others assuring us that, although 
it be very bad, it is not to be compared 
with the positive blessings of Chris- 
tianity. How many, especially among 
the young, has this one mistaken 



48 PAX VOBISCUM. 

phrase driven forever away from the 
kingdom of God? Instead of making 
Christ attractive, it makes Him out 
a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty 
restrictions, calling for self-denial 
where none is necessary, making mis- 
ery a virtue under the plea that it is 
the yoke of Christ, and happiness 
criminal because it now and then 
evades it. According to this concep- 
tion, Christians are at best the victims 
of a depressing fate; their life is a 
penance; and their hope for the next 
world purchased by a slow martyrdom 
in this. 

The mistake has arisen from taking 
the word "yoke" here in the same 
sense, as in the expressions "undei 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 49 

the yoke," or "wear the yoke in his 
youth." But in Christ's illustration 
it is not the jugum of the Roman 
soldier, but the simple " harness " 
or " ox-collar " of the Eastern peasant. 
It is the literal wooden yoke which He, 
with His own hands in the carpenter 
shop, had probably often made. He 
knew the difference between a smooth 
yoke and a rough one, a bad fit and a 
good fit ; the difference also it made to 
the patient animal which had to wear 
it. The rough yoke galled, and the 
burden was heavy ; the smooth yoka 
caused no pain, and the burden was 
lightly drawn. The badly-fitted har- 
ness was a misery; the well-fitted col- 
lar was "easy." 



50 PAX VOBISCUM. 

And what was the " burden " ? It 
was not some special burden laid upon 
the Christian, some unique infliction 
that they alone must bear. It was 
what all men bear. It was simply 
life, human life itself, the general bur- 
den of life which all must carry with 
them from the cradle to the grave. 
Christ saw that men took life painfully, 
To some it was a weariness, to others 
a failure, to many a tragedy, to all a 
struggle and a pain. How to carry 
this burden of life had been the whole 
world's problem. It is still the whole 
world's problem. And here is Christ's 
solution : " Carry it as I do. Take 
life as I take it. Look at it from My 
point of view. Interpret it upon My 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 51 

principles. Take My yoke and learn 
of Me, and you will find it easy. For 
My yoke is easy, works easily, sits 
right upon the shoulders, and therefore 
My burden is light." 

There is no suggestion here that 
religion will absolve any man from 
bearing burdens. That would be to 
absolve him from living, since it is 
life itself that is the burden. What 
Christianity does propose is to make it 
tolerable. Christ's yoke is simply His 
secret for the alleviation of human life, 
His prescription for the best and hap- 
piest method of living. Men harness 
themselves to the work and stress of 
the world in clumsy and unnatural 
ways. The harness they put on is 



52 PAX VOBISCUM." 

antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar 
at the best, they make its strain and 
friction past enduring, by placing it 
where the neck is most sensitive ; and 
by mere continuous irritation this sen- 
sitiveness increases until the whole 
nature is quick and sore. 

This is the origin, among other 
things, of a disease called " touchi- 
ness " — a disease which, in spite of its 
innocent name, is one of the gravest 
sources of restlessness in the world. 
Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, 
is a morbid condition of the inward 
disposition. It is self-love inflamed to 
the acute point; conceit, with a hair- 
trigger. The cure is to shift the yoke 
to some other place; to let men and 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 53 

/ 

things touch us through some new and 
perhaps as yet unused part of our 
nature ; to become meek and lowly in 
heart while the old nature is becoming 
numb from want of use. It is the beau- 
tiful work of Christianity everywhere to 
adjust the burden of life to those who 
bear it, and them to it. It has a per- 
fectly miraculous gift of healing. With- 
out doing any violence to human nature 
it sets it right with life, harmonizing it 
with all surrounding things, and restor- 
ing those who are jaded with the fatigue 
and dust of the world to a new grace 
of living. In the mere matter of alter- 
ing the perspective of life and changing 
the proportion of things, its functions in 
lightening the care of man is altogether 



54 PAX VOBISCUM. 

its own. The weight of a load depends 
upon the attraction of the earth. But 
suppose the attraction of the earth were 
removed? A ton on some other planet, 
where the attraction of gravity is less, 
does not weigh half a ton. Now Chris- 
tianity removes the attraction of the 
earth, and this is one way in which 
it diminishes men's burden. It makes 
them citizens of another world. What 
was a ton yesterday is not half a ton 
to-day. So without changing one's cir- 
cumstances, merely by offering a wider 
horizon and a different standard, it alters 
the whole aspect of the world. 

Christianity as Christ taught is the 
truest philosophy of life ever spoken. 
But let us be quite sure when we speak 



WHAT YOKES ARE FOR. 55 

of Christianity that we mean Christ's 
Christianity. Other versions are either 
caricatures, or exaggerations, or mis- 
understandings, or shortsighted and 
surface readings. For the most part 
their attainment is hopeless and the 
results wretched. But I care not who 
the person is, or through what vale of 
tears he has passed, or is about to pass, 
there is a new life for him along this 
path. 



56 PAX VOBISCUM. 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 



TX J ERE Rest my subject, there are 
* " other things I should wish to 
say about it, and other kinds of Rest 
of which I should like to speak. But 
that is not my subject. My theme is 
that the Christian experiences are not 
the work of magic, but come under 
the law of Cause and Effect. And I 
have chosen Rest only as a single 
illustration of the working of that 
principle. If there were time I might 
next run over all the Christian experi- 
ences in turn, and show how the same 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 57 

wide law applies to each. But I think 
it may serve the better purpose if 
I leave this further exercise to your- 
selves. I know no Bible study that 
you will find more full of fruit, or 
which will take you nearer to the ways 
of God, or make the Christian life 
itself more solid or more sure. I shall 
add only a single other illustration of 
what I mean, before I close. 

Where does Joy come from? I 
knew a Sunday scholar whose con- 
ception of Joy was that it was a thing 
made in lumps and kept somewhere in 
Heaven, and that when people prayed 
for it, pieces were somehow let down 
and fitted into their souls. I am not 
sure that views as gross and material 



58 PAX VOBISCUM. 

are not often held by people who ought 
to be wiser. In reality, Joy is as 
much a matter of Cause and Effect as 
pain. No one can get Joy by merely 
asking for it. It is one of the ripest 
fruits of the Christian life, and, like 
all fruits, must be grown. There is a 
very clever trick in India called the 
mango-trick. A seed is put in the 
ground and covered up, and after 
divers incantations a full-blown mango 
bush appears within five minutes. I 
never met any one who knew how 
the thing was done, but I never met 
any one who believed it to be any- 
thing else than a conjuring-trick. The 
world is pretty unanimous now in its 
belief in the orderliness of Nature. 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 59 

Men may not know how fruits grow, 
but they do know that they cannot 
grow in five minutes. Some lives 
have not even a stalk on which fruits 
could hang, even if they did grow in 
five minutes. Some have never planted 
one sound seed of Joy in all their lives : 
and others who may have planted a 
germ or two have lived so little in 
sunshine that they never could come 
to maturity. 

Whence, then, is joy? Christ put 
His teaching upon this subject into one 
of the most exquisite of His parables. 
I should in any instance have appealed 
to His teaching here, as in the case of 
Rest for I do not wish you to think I 
am speaking words of my own. But 



60 PAX VOBISCUM. 

it so happens that He has dealt with it 
in words of unusual fulness. 

I need not recall the whole illustra- 
tion. It is the parable of the Vine. 
Did you ever think why Christ spoke 
that parable? He did not merely 
throw it into space as a fine illustration 
of general truths. It was not simply a 
statement of the mystical union, and 
the doctrine of an indwelling Christ. 
It was that; but it was more. After 
He had saidMt, He did what was not 
an unusual thing when He was teaching 
His greatest lessons. He turned to 
the disciples and said He would tell 
them why He had spoken it. It was 
to tell them how to get joy. "These 
things have I spoken unto you," He 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 61 

said, "that My joy might remain in 
you and that your Joy might be full." 
It was a purposed and deliberate com- 
munication of His secret of Happiness. 
Go back over these verses, then, and 
you will find the Causes of this Effect, 
the spring, and the only spring, out of 
which true Happiness comes. I am not 
going to analyze them in detail. I ask 
you to enter into the words for your- 
selves. Remember, in the first place, 
that the Vine was the Eastern symbol 
of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad 
the heart of man. Yet, however inno- 
cent that gladness — for the expressed 
juice of the grape was the common 
drink at every peasant's board — the 
gladness was only a gross and passing 



62 PAX VOBISCUM. 

thing. This was not true happiness, 
and the vine of the Palestine vineyards 
was not the true vine. Christ was " the 
true Vine." Here, then, is the ulti- 
mate source of Joy. Through whatever 
media it reaches us, all true joy and 
Gladness find their source in Christ. 
By this, of course, is not meant that the 
actual Joy experienced is transferred 
from Christ's nature, or is something 
passed on from Him to us. What is 
passed on is His method of getting 
it There is, indeed, a sense in which 
we can share another's joy or an- 
other's sorrow. But that is another 
matter. Christ is the source of Joy 
to men in the sense in which He is 
the source of Rest. His people share 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 63 

His life, and therefore share its con- 
sequences, and one of these is Joy. 
His method of living is one that in the 
nature of things produces Joy. When 
He spoke of His Joy remaining with 
us, He meant in part that the causes 
which produced it should continue to 
act. His followers, that is to say, 
by repeating His life would experi- 
ence its accompaniments. His Joy, 
His kind of Joy, would remain with 
them. 

The medium through which this Joy 
comes is next explained : " He that 
abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth 
much fruit." Fruit first, Joy next; the 
one the cause or medium of the other. 
Fruit-bearing is the necessary antece- 



64 PAX VOBISCUM. 

dent; Joy both the necessary conse- 
quent and the necessary accompani- 
ment. It lay partly in the bearing 
fruit, partly in the fellowship which 
made that possible. Partly, that is to 
say, Joy lay in mere constant living in 
Christ's presence, with all that that 
implied of peace, of shelter and of 
love; partly in the influence of that 
Life upon mind and character and 
will; and partly in the inspiration to 
live and work for others, with all that 
that brings of self-riddance and Joy 
in others' gain. All these, in different 
ways and at different times, are sources 
of pure Happiness. Even the sim- 
plest of them — to do good to other 
people — is an instant and infalli- 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 65 

ble specific. There is no mystery 
about Happiness whatever. Put in the 
right ingredients and it must come out. 
He that abide th in Him will bring 
forth much fruit; and bringing forth 
much fruit is Happiness. The infalli- 
ble receipt for Happiness, then, is to 
do good ; and the infallible receipt for 
doing good is to abide in Christ. The 
surest proof that all this is a plain 
matter of Cause and Effect is that men 
may try every other conceivable way 
of finding Happiness, and they will 
fail. Only the right cause in each 
case can produce the right effect. 

Then the Christian experiences are 
our own making ? In the same sense 
in which grapes are our own making, 



6Q PAX VOBISCUM. 

and no more. All fruits grow — 
whether they grow in the soil or in 
the soul; whether they are the fruits 
of the wild grape or of the True Vine. 
No man can make things grow. He 
can get them to grow by arranging all 
the circumstances and fulfilling all the 
conditions. But the growing is done 
by God. Causes and effects are eternal 
arrangements, set in the constitution of 
the world ; fixed beyond man's order- 
ing. What man can do is to place 
himself in the midst of a chain of 
sequences. Thus he can get things to 
grow : thus he himself can grow. But 
the grower is the Spirit of God. 

What more need I add but this — 
test the method by experiment Do 



HOW FRUITS GROW. 67 

not imagine that you have got these 
things because you know how to get 
them. As well try to feed upon a 
cookery book. But I think I can 
promise that if you try in this simple 
and natural way, you will not fail. 
Spend the time you have spent in 
sighing for fruits in fulfilling the con- 
ditions of their growth. The fruits 
will come, must come. We have hith- 
erto paid immense attention to effects, 
to the mere experiences themselves; 
we have described them, extolled them, 
advised them, prayed for them — done 
everything but find out what caused 
them. Henceforth let us deal with 
causes. " To be," says Lotze, " is to 
be in relations." About every other 



68 PAX VOBISCUM. 

method of living the Christian life 
there is an uncertainty. About every 
other method of acquiring the Chris- 
tian experiences there is a " perhaps." 
But in so far as this method is the 
way of nature, it cannot fail. Its 
guarantee is the laws of the universe, 
and these are " the Hands of the Liv- 
ing God." 



THE TRUE VINE. 



THE TRUE VINE. 



" T AM the true vine, and my Father 
is the husbandman. Every branch 
in me that beareth not fruit he taketh 
away: and every branch that beareth 
fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring 
forth more fruit Now ye are clean 
through the word which I have spoken 
unto you. Abide in me, and I in 
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit 
of itself, except it abide in the vine; 
no more can ye, except ye abide in 
me. I am the vine, ye are the 
branches: he that abideth in me, and 
I in him, the same bringeth forth much 



70 PAX VOBISCUM. 

fruit: for without me ye can do noth- 
ing. If a man abide not in me, he is 
cast forth as a branch, and is withered ; 
and men gather them, and cast them 
into the fire, and they are burned. If 
ye abide in me, and my word abide in 
you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it 
shall be done unto you. Herein is 
my Father glorified, that ye may bear 
much fruit ; so ye shall be my disciples. 
As the Father hath loved me, so 
have I loved you: continue ye in my 
love. If ye keep my commandments, 
ye shall abide in my love ; even as I 
have kept my Father's commandments, 
and abide in his love. These things 
have I spoken unto you, that my joy 
might remain in you, and that your 
joy might be full." 



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